


the sun sets differently, with you

by petalhwas



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Angst, Beaches, Friends With Benefits, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Oneshot, Pining, Sunsets, Woosan, have i ever written angst before, i mention, like once, literally just woosan, literally the setting is a sunset, maybe a bedroom, rip san's heart, seonghwa, uh, weird metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 00:58:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19367029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petalhwas/pseuds/petalhwas
Summary: some things were just more interesting, is all....in which i had to write this instead of sleeping until 4am.





	the sun sets differently, with you

**Author's Note:**

> hello!
> 
> i found this song called 'sunset lover' right, and immediately i got the BIGGEST bit of sadness from this?? and i'm like there are literally no words what! is going on! but out of all of that i kinda wrote something that i didn't think i'd publish, and it's kinda weird with the way it's presented but i just wanted to write a short straightforward thing
> 
> maybe i'll make this into a full au who knows! but if you're here, thank u! pls enjoy this 2am oneshot that i spent two hours writing while listening to this song on repeat that i'm lit rally so sick of now but n e ways
> 
> p.s. here's the song, but even worse bc sad hours? never closed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY9e7MEL5NM
> 
> p.p.s. i didn't wanna bother lisa with beta reading this because it's just a one shot so if there are any spelling mistakes pls call me and grammarly out on it! and lisa if you're reading this i love u! <3

_hello!_

_really quick - this story is completely fictional and meant for entertainment purposes only!_

_everything is entirely made up, and the real-life people that the characters are named after have nothing to do with how they really are. i wrote this solely for your enjoyment (hopefully!) and for me to have something to pass the time with._

_please have fun with this, and thank you for everything!_

_\- mandi_

...

Choi San found sunsets superficial.

They were overdramatic, too grossly romanticized for him. The truth of there being enough pollution in the air, just to create a mirage of beauty? He couldn’t understand it.

He couldn’t understand many things. 

He couldn’t understand how sunsets were so beautiful to people, he couldn’t understand how smartwatches worked, he couldn’t understand how his next door neighbor held parties until 3am knowing she was in an apartment complex with elderly couples upstairs.

And he _really_ couldn’t understand how he could let himself be used by Jung Wooyoung. The plastic wrapping of candy seemed to have more of a use to him than he did, but yet, he still lusted after the syrupy praises of Wooyoung’s empty words after spending another night, craved the hollow pencil stick touches and couldn’t wait to feel the electric ruse of another high going through the wires of his body, all because of his boy. 

But he was being used. And he knew that. And the more he thinks of the what could have been if the circumstances were different, if _he_ was different, makes him want to claw at his skin and bang his head against the wall. He couldn’t have him like that, it’s not what was planned. He couldn’t have him.

But he knew that.

And for Choi San, pretty-faced, misty personality with eyes of corona pools and a smile of aurora Choi San, to be letting himself get used by the worn out hands of Jung Wooyoung when there were plenty of soft and wanting fingertips pulling at his sleeve,that actually _wanted_ him, makes him itch under his flesh and fizz in his bones.

“What are you thinking about, doll?”

San blinks, pulls himself back into consciousness and stares at this same, empty yet full sunset, into the pink and violet crosshatch of foam clouds in the sky that he shares with him every day, and sighs.

“Nothing. Too quiet out here.” 

That was a lie. The waves did nothing, but yet, screamed at him with every crash to the golden sand shore.

“You’re right. But, it’s perfect to get away. To spend time with you out here. It’s perfect.”

San fades out, shuts his eyes again as the honey amber glow of the sun runs over his face, warmth kissing his clothes and soft sea doldrums lightly tugging at his hair. It seems like Wooyoung always knew the correct things to say to make San think that, maybe, somewhere in this fucked up arrangement that they never dared to switch up, that _maybe_ there was hope for San to erase the terms. Maybe, there was hope for Wooyoung to not use him, to recycle him out like empty glass bottles, only to come back to him and fill him up again, just to pour him out, pour out his tireless pining and fill him with empty promises again.

Maybe.

San opens his eyes once more, sees that Wooyoung is looking at him, eyes glowing against the sunset, as if he had the honey drip itself in his gaze, and he’s looking at him, _really_ looking at him. San goes shy, blushes rouge under his stare, leans back onto his hands, slightly curling sensitive fingertips in the dry, sugar sand beneath him, as he gives him a silent look.

 _Why are you looking at me like that?_  

“You’re even prettier on the beach. My gorgeous doll.” 

Addictive, each word was an imaginative tablet on his tongue, a drag of smoky detriment, an injection of attachment. He smiles, feels the jet black of naivity cover his heart as Wooyoung brings up a hand, places two fingers on his chin and one thumb pressed to his bottom lip. He always did this - stupid, _stupid_ things like this - to get San warmed. When he kisses him during the sunset this time, it feels like San really was swimming with the tides the ocean was shyly sweeping in. The pulls of current between his head and his heart, fighting to get back to the shores of what really is, but he doesn’t want to.

Doesn’t want to sink his feet into the sand just yet.

And with these kisses of plastic covering came the deprivation of what was real and what is. Just like the sunsets. It’s real that it’s just the earth deteriorating, and what it _is,_ is the beginnings of climate change. San knows he’s deteriorating, too, under Wooyoung’s surreal pollutants of what he can’t have, of one-sided desire.

San thinks Jung Wooyoung was _really_ fucking superficial.

…

San’s sitting on his bed, sheets ruffled and still partly warm, knees pulled up to his chest and he’s got his arms thrown around them, a way to keep himself from constantly breaking apart. 

Wooyoung took a liking to breaking him apart. Liked to take pieces of him and manipulate them in his hands in their most intimate moments, liked to pick apart the most sensitive spots and make him feel good, so rich and priceless, as if he was worth something to him. 

Only to leave him feeling vacant and insignificant when he leaves.

San knew that living alone was going to be a bad idea from the start, but good _god_ if he thought it was going to be like this. He thinks it’s sick, how much he relies on one person to make him feel whole, and it’s so fucking _sick_ how he’s a shadow of a ghost, sitting here on his bed with nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

So instead of thinking of all the other people Wooyoung chose to spend time with, to give only a fraction of his time and attention to, San watches the sunset by himself today. He watches the sun slowly, languidly fall for the moon and all he’s got to offer her, but yet, San can’t stop thinking.

The strums of Wooyoung’s melodies were still reverberating in his head, the words that were so different each time were earworms, and no matter how hard his heart desperately tried to pick it out of his head, telling him how much more he deserved over _this,_ he could never find a stable method.

And now that he’s alone, _again,_ he stares out of the window, past the tall buildings of the apartments across from him, to the invasive shine of the setting sun over rooftops. San finds the comfort that he should have gotten from the sun in the open windows of the tenants across from him. 

At least someone was there.

He hoped that someone else was going through the same thing that he was going through, even though he swore he’d never wish it on his worst enemy. He hoped that someone, in those apartments across the street, was experiencing something as barren and vast as this.

As being the last few pages in an open diary, for someone to come and write all over you, but leave no room for self-thought, to ditch you along with the other written pages in the desk drawer when they were finished with what they had to say and found better. But San quickly discards it, discards it with the nagging of wanting to be something more, puts it in his own desk drawer. He doesn’t blame Wooyoung, for running out of space and needing new paper sometimes.

Some things were just more interesting, is all.

…

It was four minutes to 2am when San brings it up.

He asks Wooyoung, who’s hazy and tired and only had enough energy to lazily play with San’s fingers as they drew absentminded circles on his bare chest, a simple question that would have terrible repercussions if swindled the wrong way. The moonlight fills the violet pitch dark of the room with a milky embrace as San’s got bedhead, and the two were exchanging silent conversations through the whispers of fingers on sensitive skin when he brings it up.

“What are we?”

The question was supposed to be simple, but it was a dog collar to Jung Wooyoung, and his breathing wrinkles out, as if he really was being suffocated with the burden of answering the question.

“Friends with benefits. I thought we agreed on that. We benefit each other, don’t we? What’s more to want?”

San stops drawing on Wooyoung’s chest, and even in the dark, feels of neon strobe lights. He’s embarrassed; it’s like he told Wooyoung all of the things that he wanted to say in rebuttal, to ask him the why and what and who and the how questions, to get some form of validation in the gelatin relationship the two had, but he never said anything at all. 

The moon tells him to be quiet, that if he even tried to tell Wooyoung even a sliver of the things his heart had told him - that his heart was continually screaming at him through his metal door of denial and pining and indignation - that he would regret it. He would regret it either way, but the moon tells him that the judgement scale would lean a bit more to the left, so he stays quiet.

Again.

“You’re right. I was just asking...making sure we were on the same page.”

And they weren’t. Wooyoung was somewhere deep in the chapters and San was lost in the fucking table of contents, but he lets it go.

He’s lucky enough that they were even in the same book, at least.

… 

It was in the way Wooyoung held him.

When he did, it felt like he was lacing more than just his fingers with his. It felt as though San was holding the stars, the brightest glow in between Sirius and Vega that nobody else would dare get near. He feels as if he’s standing in a patch of dandelions, pretty and fluffed and important. And the gust of breeze, that took the form of Wooyoung’s attention, of Wooyoung’s looks that spoke of nothing yet rambled about everything, would broadcast them, would carry their secrets and thoughts with it to a place of desires.

And the more he thinks about the way holding him felt, the more he’s starting to think that maybe he wasn’t cut out for this whole temporary thing. In fact, he _knows_ he’s not cut out for this whole temporary thing, but he keeps a finger looped through the threading of the hopes that maybe this whole thing would become unabbreviated soon, as he floats with Wooyoung through the stormy skies of whatever the fuck they had built up.

Or maybe it was nothing at all.

“San, baby, I missed you, today.” 

Wooyoung’s voice is there again, reminds San of stagnant static in the television, and he’s watching it, watching and waiting for his show to come back on. 

“Why didn’t you come to see me, then?” San asks softly, a small, counterfeit smile plastered on his face because he knows Wooyoung enough to predict his answer.

“I was busy.”

San doesn’t have anything to say, opts for looking over Wooyoung’s glossy skin that the sunset was presenting for him, opts to look into Wooyoung’s pretty chestnut pools, to look at the way the sun lights up the auric flecks near his pupils and the scattered daisy freckles adorning his button nose. He opts for suppressing himself again, opts for plunging into the icy waters of let down and disappointment, and kisses him. 

Kissing Wooyoung was meant to be warm, like how rose petals felt between fingers. It was supposed to be idealistic, fairy-tale bursts of happiness beneath his skin every _single time_ he kisses him. It was supposed to feel of light crepuscular rays, of astronomical twilights and gamma-ray bursts were right at his fingertips with every press of his lips.

Instead, San was trapped under arctic ice, grazing just beneath the surface, but finding no way out to get back to his sun. 

Wooyoung thinks he pulls away from him because he was finished. San only pulled back because he didn’t like the feeling anymore, and his lips stung, burned with fraudulent necessity and false hopes. And with the way Wooyoung’s sparking fingers were dragging across San’s flint skin, it makes him itchy again.

“Come home with me, doll. I want to spend the night with you.” The press of Wooyoung’s lips on San’s throat make his skin sing back to him, makes goosebumps fall down his body like the Tutendo rains, and he can’t help but give in, can’t help but feel like melting sugar in his hold.

 _God,_ the way he holds him.

“Okay. I could do that.” San’s made of red stoplights for now, doesn’t know why, when he’d been craving this exact moment not even a few minutes ago, but he hides it in a pretty dimpled smile. “Now, get off, Woo, we need to watch the sun go down!”

And this small ritual they had, of watching her fall, makes this a little bit worth it. Makes the periods of being alone - no, the periods of _loneliness_ \- and the periods of languishing over the way hands would run through messy obsidian hair, over the way his kisses would leave impressions in his skin, over the way he spoke to him as if he was the last person on this earth, a little worth it.

And as San rests his head on Wooyoung’s shoulder, smelling salt and remnants of his cologne that came in square glass bottles, he wonders how many sunsets they have left.

As he waits, and waits, and waits, for that damned static to tune back to his show.

… 

“I want to end this.”

“What?”

San takes a deep breath, looks at Wooyoung and there’s something in his chest, Wooyoung plucking way too hard at his heartstrings and making the most awful melodies in his head. They’re meeting here again, just in time for the sun to set, but the entire way here, he couldn’t shake the shade of the front he’s built up, and even more that there’s just _something about_ the way Wooyoung’s voice megaphones in San’s head that makes him feel like he _can’t._

That makes him feel like all that time he spent in the shower rehearsing for how this would go until the water went cold, talking through tears to Seonghwa over the phone about how bad this was for him emotionally, tugging at his hair and hoping to eventually pull his conflicting frustrations out - was for nothing.

 _Don’t chicken out,_ he had told his reflection for the nth time before coming to meet Wooyoung for the sunset, _don’t be a coward._

“San…”

San shakes his head, looks at the sand and musters up the courage he has left in the soapy crash of the waves against the shoreline. He doesn’t know if he could do it, doesn’t know if he _wants_ to.

“I said that…” San blinks, before looking up at him again, into eyes that knew how to dissolve his bravery into cold feet, and it’s when he sees Wooyoung again, _really sees_  him again, that he feels like his battery is at exactly 22%. “I want to end th-”

It was then when time stopped on the beach today.

The seconds seemed to have turned into hours as he feels the sickeningly sweet touch of lips on his own, successful in the task of shutting him up and punching him in the gut. His courage and pride melt like candle wax under Wooyoung’s touches of torches. He has San’s hand in his as he kisses him in the sunset, as if he would render in her rays. He lifts again, like Wooyoung was his own personal bundle of cotton candy clouds, soft and inviting and San couldn’t find it within himself to ever tire of him.

Wooyoung pulls back only slightly, San chasing the fructose gloss of seeking lips and getting nothing but the ghost of his mouth on his, and he rests his forehead against San’s, centering him.

San suddenly feels cradled in the setting sun’s warm hands, feels her fingers skate across his skin, her rays like unspoken love against his body in the moment that he finds himself in. He still has his eyes shut, and it’s like the ocean has sat him on her lap and is taking him into the waves with her as Wooyoung’s just pressed against him. Gentle peace, serene tranquility, as he’s so close to Wooyoung again, his fingers clutching the fabric of Wooyoung’s shirt and the other dancing with dainty fingers. 

“I want you. Only you, nobody else.” 

San could only see him and Wooyoung, and they’re in that bed if dandelions again. He feels free, as if someone had given his leaflet heart a chance to unlock itself, and when he takes it, he can’t help but feel over the moon. 

“S-say it again.”

And this just makes it so much harder.

Wooyoung pulls back once more, eyes ticking from San’s pretty blonde hair to his dark eyes, to his nose and to his lips and San really can’t help but color rose under Wooyoung’s gaze, because it held something else in it. Under all the muted looks he’s received from Wooyoung, San sees that this one spoke the most, this one spoke to him and reversed all of the symphonies of strength that he’s composed for this very moment, a skip in his track as if he was pulling out his tapes.

“I want _you_ , San. Please.”

Wooyoung’s voice is so desperate to San just then, he could practically tear it right in half between his fingers. And Wooyoung his holding him again, holding his hands and stroking a thumb across warmed skin in a way of keeping him here, silently telling him that he was making a mistake. 

At which end, he couldn’t put his finger on it.

“I’ve stopped ages ago. I’ve tried to ignore it, push it down, whatever the fuck _it_ was, but they just weren’t you. None of them were _you_. I tried finding something in them that none of them could give me. I’m sorry.”

San really sees him just then, in this moment where the sun’s shadow is hugging over the dips and curves of Wooyoung’s despondent features. He’s stepped out of his clothing of fearless ruse and he’s handing him his heart, just like that. San feels a rush of yearning in his chest, and holds Wooyoung’s hand a little tighter, bringing it up to his lips and kissing the silver rings decorating his fingers, looking into glossy eyes, and San can’t help but find the beauty in that, too. 

The beauty of his vulnerability, the beauty of his openness and subjection, everything that he constantly feels at the stonewall of Wooyoung himself, and he smiles at him.

“I can’t, Woo.” San shakes his head, and he can’t help but deteriorate under the Wooyoung’s silky stare, peering into the tears that built up like amber lilies on crystal ponds, seeing one slide down his hot skin like mercury. “I can’t.”

He takes Wooyoung’s hand off of his cheek, holds it in his own.

“San, please. I’ll do anything.”

Anything.

Anything?

San nods, but Wooyoung’s hands feel like spikes in his own, like cactus spines in his soft flesh, and with each scrape of skin against his, it hurts, like he would damage him physically if he kept this up.

“Anything, huh? Then move on. F-for me.”

San is breaking. He doesn’t remember the last time he’s seen Wooyoung cry. They’ve been together for quite some time now. Not once has San seen Wooyoung cry. Not even watching the Train to Busan or Blue Valentine.

Not once.

And he was thankful that he hadn’t during all that time, because in the way he melts like popsicles left in the July swelter, the way he felt like a poison flowing through his bloodstream and arteries and fucking _bones,_  makes San’s chest cave, drench like a wet towel and Wooyoung was wringing him out.

But, at the same time, for him to easily peel back his fortresses and peer into him, so effortlessly, was nearly surreal.. 

Even in the heat of the sunset’s lost rays, he can’t help but feel cold.

San is listening to Wooyoung’s silence, and as he’s looking into wavering eyes, sees his sky falling and burning napalm behind them, he thinks that this is too much raw emotion for him to handle in one evening. He can’t deal with this.

Doesn’t want to, anymore.

“You’ll be okay,” San says, feels his heart run loose and he lets go of Wooyoung’s hand, leaving him and all of the late nights they’d spend together, all of the laughter that would fill up the rooms they’ve stayed in, all of the pretty looks and conversations they’ve had during the sunsets behind.

And as San abandons him in the sand, walks away from the pleads for him not to leave him alone, with his arms hugging himself because he _couldn’t_ fall apart again, he thinks that he would be okay, too. He would be okay with that dashed line dissolving into nothing and being carried off with the dandelions and butterflies, with waking up next to an empty space of hankering to start with rather than being ripped in two when he would leave, and he would definitely be okay with watching the superficial sunsets with the phantom of his smile by his side, and staying empty as the velvets of the orange violet sky wash over him. It’s sick, but, he would be okay, too.

For the first time in a while, he would be okay, too.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! this was my first attempt at writing a full angsty? one-sided type relationship thing, so please let me know how it went! hopefully i didn't disappoint ahhh
> 
> my twt is always the same as my user (so @petalhwas, but give it like two weeks i'm terribly indecisive smh), let's be friends! 
> 
> thank you again c:
> 
> \- love, mandi


End file.
